


A Stone's Throw

by zombified_queer



Category: Smile For Me (Video Game)
Genre: Character Development, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Native American Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26135599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombified_queer/pseuds/zombified_queer
Summary: Sometimes you have to get right up and out the first chance you can.[Originally posted for sfmweek2020]
Kudos: 3





	A Stone's Throw

There is a joke that stems from Jerafina’s married aunts and seeps into her cousins: _Throw a rock. No one’s got gas money to drive out to it._ Followed by nervous laughter, edged by truth. Then crack-hiss of a beer can.

Jerafina has always been throwing stones. New York and Los Angeles and Santa Fe. No gas money. Ha ha.

But she didn’t think that joke was very funny.

Crack-hiss.

The other girls turn mean at seventeen. Girls with last names like Begay and Wintercloud. The other girls turn her from “Jerry” or “Littlefeather” into Tabouli. And then those girls hate how Tabouli rolls out of the mouth blindingly bitter and too white.

White like bleach.

Jerafina stops throwing stones so hard. Salt Lake City lays where boys in white dress shirts and black ties believe in killing the Indian to save the pretty girl underneath. Boise, maybe, which prompts potato jokes for weeks. Las Vegas with it’s bright neon and a handful of cousins and casinos.

She settles for a four-hour stone’s throw away. For Laramie.

Jerafinea marks high school graduation in her calendar. Applies to college. Teaching, maybe. Or nursing. And she keeps a bag packed. Gets a car, one of those fourth-hand things that’s good for driving to school and maybe one long trip.

No gas money.

She avoids the party and its crack-hiss beer-flavoured applause. Changes out of her dress and into jeans and a buckskin jacket that looks almost too silly with its fringe. Tosses her single back in the trunk. Drives like that car’s stolen.

Onward toward the shining rock formation of Laramie.

No gas money.

She laughs because crying is out of the question. Always has been.

The punchline is that cars let you walk. If a horse keels over starved of gas, it’s likely to break your legs on the way down. A car just sputters and drifts to the shoulder easy and safe.

She laughs, her bag slung over her shoulder. And every laugh shakes the fringe on her buckskin jacket. She doesn’t stick her thumb out. Jerafina knows better than to accept rides from white truckers chewing tobacco or the nice white churchgoing ladies who pity you.

None of them have ever seen an Indian in the flesh and they love to keep you for as long as they can.

Tonight’s kind of like that night. There’s a good twenty or so years between these nights. 

She didn’t have a stone’s throw in mind when she got into her car. All she knew was she needed to get away from the doing nothing during summer break. Away from the planning of next year.

The Habitat’s just a stone’s throw away from Laramie, though.

No gas money, not for teachers in the city. Haha.

The car drifts to the side of the road and she leaves it there. And as she follows the crude signs pointing to this “health retreat” she laughs because she spent too much time crying. Too much time running.

It’s cool, the sort of calm that comes before summer really settles in. She’s not wearing the buckskin jacket as she follows the highway up the mountain, toward the Habitat. Maybe it’s hanging up in the back of her closet, warped and ill-fitting.

Ha ha.

The gate of the Habitat lurches with a crack. Then the wheels hiss. Like a beer can.

Like a rock through a window.

Jerafina, tired of walking and tired of laughing, slinks down to the Lounge for a drink.


End file.
